If you want instant color for sunny garden spots, it’s hard to
beat petunias. These summer annual bedding plants are inexpensive,
available in six packs, flats or 4-inch pots, and will keep on
blooming throughout summer until heavy frost.
If you want instant color for sunny garden spots, it’s hard to beat petunias. These summer annual bedding plants are inexpensive, available in six packs, flats or 4-inch pots, and will keep on blooming throughout summer until heavy frost.
Petunias have always offered non-stop color during the warm season, but their versatility is what really puts them over the top compared to other bedding plants. You can choose from new miniature-flowering types, new vigorous trailing types, and the old standbys, including multiflora and grandiflora varieties.
No matter what the growth pattern, petunias feature trumpet-shaped flowers, and soft, thick leaves that are slightly sticky to the touch. The most common flower types have a single set of plain-edged petals, but there are also fancier double-layered flowers, or some with ruffled or fringed flowers.
Colors range from white, cream and yellow to pink, red, magenta, light blue and deep purple. Many flowers have veins of accenting colors or alternating stripes.
Among the newest introductions are millifloras and trailing types. The miniature millifloras got their start right here in Gilroy. Goldsmith Seeds hybridized milliflora petunias around eight years ago with Fantasy, which are available in more than 10 colors today.
Both plants and flowers are about half the size of standard petunias, making them ideal for containers, window boxes or hanging baskets. To show off their compact, dense mounds, plant them in clusters of three, five or seven, depending on space.
Trailing petunias come with names like Wave, Surfina and Ramblin.’ The Wave series hit the market with a splash in 1989 with Purple Wave, an All-America Selections winner. Goldsmith Seeds countered with Ramblin’ trailing petunias a few years ago.
Trailing petunias are incredibly vigorous, spreading to four feet or more on low, six-inch-high plants. Flowers are multiflora-sized at about three inches across.
Multiflora petunias are your standard petunias that flower abundantly on eight to 10-inch plants. Grandiflora types offer larger flowers at three to five inches across, but they don’t bloom as vigorously as multifloras.
As mentioned earlier, petunias will bloom in warm weather right up until heavy frost. Sometimes they can be overwintered in our area and they’ll come back in the spring. However, success depends on how harsh a winter we get.
Petunias do well in high heat, but grow best in rich, well-drained soil.
Besides snails, tobacco budworm is a problem in our area. This little green worm will eat the buds of flowers, stopping the flowering cycle if not caught early. Budworms can be sprayed with standard insecticides, but will also be controlled with Bt. This stands for Bacillus thurengiensis, which is an active ingredient in many different brands of available sprays.
